Today innovation is everyone's business. Whether you are a manager in a global corporation, an entrepreneur starting up, in a government role, or a teacher in an elementary school, everyone is expected to get lean – to do better with less. And that is why we all need design thinking. At every level in every kind of organization, design thinking provides the tools you need to become an innovative thinker and uncover creative opportunities that are there – you're just not seeing them yet.
In this course, we provide an overview of design thinking and work with a model containing four key questions and several tools to help you understand design thinking as a problem solving approach. We also look at several stories from different organizations that used design thinking to uncover compelling solutions.

From the lesson

Preparing Your Mind for Innovation

Design thinking is not only about process and tools, it is about people as well: about you as a design thinker and about the people you want to create value for and with. And so, before we jump into the process of using design thinking to generate and test ideas, we want to first focus on your mindset, and look at whether your mind is prepared to both see and act on opportunity when it shows up in your world. We will examine this issue by looking at the stories of two very capable managers, George and Geoff, and how their differing mindsets affect their ability to lead innovation and growth. We'll also learn about the value of the Storytelling tool. By the end of this module, you'll have a better understanding of a mind prepared to see and take action when opportunity arises, and how to use the Storytelling tool.